Ten Spanish 'false friends' you need to watch out for
The Local Spain - [email protected]
Published: 7 Mar, 2017 CET.
Updated: Tue 7 Mar 2017 09:59 CET
Spanish is full of false friends, or words that look the same but mean something completely different. In this week's The Local List we look at the funniest mistakes made by speakers of both English and Spanish.
At first glance, English and Spanish can look and sound pretty similar, right?
So many words in the two languages resemble each other that it's easy to get complacent — that's autosatisfacción by the way, not complacencia.
Top ten: Funniest false friends in Spanish
In fact, the deeper you dig, the more treacherous the minefield appears for speakers of both languages.
Who hasn't got confused between the English sensible (sensato) and the Spanish sensible (sensitive)?
And is there any native speaker of English who has never accidentally said librería (bookshop) when they meant library (biblioteca)?
List complied by Alex Dunham
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At first glance, English and Spanish can look and sound pretty similar, right?
So many words in the two languages resemble each other that it's easy to get complacent — that's autosatisfacción by the way, not complacencia.
Top ten: Funniest false friends in Spanish
In fact, the deeper you dig, the more treacherous the minefield appears for speakers of both languages.
Who hasn't got confused between the English sensible (sensato) and the Spanish sensible (sensitive)?
And is there any native speaker of English who has never accidentally said librería (bookshop) when they meant library (biblioteca)?
List complied by Alex Dunham
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